Capturing "Our" Blue Heron

This huge bird has been hanging out in our north field for months now, and for months I have been trying to get an in-focus photograph of it. I saw him out there as I drove in from work this afternoon, so I raced into the house to grab my camera. I carefully checked *all 3* of my settings, hooked up the gorillapod and used it to attach the camera with zoom lens to a fencepost to stabilize it and started shooting. Woo hoo! Success!

I got a couple shots of him posing for me and then he started stalking. Have you ever seen a heron hunt? It is a wonderful study in patience and guile. There he goes...



He pounces! Unfortunately for him, he comes up empty.



Almost right away he began stalking again, so I hung around.



He pounced again. Honestly, they move almost too quickly to watch.



This time he came up with something. Yesterday I watched him catch a rat, but today's catch wasn't quite so dramatic. Probably a shrew or a mouse, judging by the size of it.



He worked it for a few seconds,



... and then it was gone.



It was all over so quickly! This whole episode took about 1 minute.